We support Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt in his recent ruling forbidding public officials from conducting public business by text.
The matter arose out of a Terre Haute City Council budget hearing last month after the redevelopment director in that city objected to texting by council members during his presentation. The Tribune-Star, based in Terre Haute, asked Britt his opinion about public officials using cell phone text messages to communicate with each other during a public meeting.
Britt had little trouble ruling that officials communicating with text messages about issues before them would violate both the spirit and letter of Indiana law. “I would definitely consider it a violation of the Open Door Law,” Britt told the Tribune-Star. “I would definitely consider that closed-door communication.”
Of course we agree, because it obviously is a violation to do public business outside of the public’s ears and eyes. We suggest, before we go down such a path in Grant County, that elected officials put their phones away before the public meeting starts. People are often rude by texting in the most inappropriate places, sometimes in mid-conversation with others. Texting while driving is against the law. Texting while an official in a public meeting should, at the very least, be an informal violation of decorum that whomever is running the meeting should stop.
Just as we wouldn’t tolerate public officials passing notes across the conference table or whispering to one another during a public meeting, we need to blow the whistle on public meeting texting before the problem develops.
Eventually courts might have to decide whether a private cell phone becomes open to public inspection because it has been misused as a vehicle to avoid public scrutiny of the public’s business.
Technology doesn’t always make life easier. Sometimes it complicates.
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